A Shi’ite shopkeeper selling these sandals in a Christian dominated area of Lebanon got into trouble when someone noticed the graveyard cross in the halloween motif and reported the store owner to the cops. The shop keeper was charged with inciting sectarian violence and is still under arrest and investigation.

Treading carefully

But the shopkeeper’s fate is unlikely to be as severe as this Pakistani woman’s, who was sentenced to death for giving offense to the Prophet Mohammed. She had apparently made a remark to her co-workers who refused a cup of water from her, saying they would not partake of anything sullied by the hands of an infidel. That drew a barbed response from the woman who was subsequently sentenced to die for her remarks. “Tears of joy poured from my eyes,” the local cleric said, when the woman was sentenced. [I had mistakenly reported her executed. That was erroneous and careless on my part]

In San Juan Capistrano, California, a couple have been fined — and will continue to be fined — for each violation, each time a group of friends gather to study the Bible at their house. ABC News reports, “they have already been fined $300 and have been told they will be fined an additional $500 per meeting if they continue to meet without a Conditional Use Permit.” The couple believe that someone in the neighborhood dislikes them for some reason known only to that person and is using the zoning authorities to put a stop to it.

The Fromms regularly host 40 to 50 friends and family members at their home from 10 a.m. to noon on Sundays for Bible studies. They don’t think noise or traffic issues are to blame for the citation. There is no music, and the meetings, they say, are largely “contemplative.”

Many who attend the Bible study drive to the house together, so there are many fewer cars than people, the Fromms say. They only have one next-door neighbor, and the space on the other side of their house is more than six acres of empty land.

In each of these cases the state was used to carry out the intent of a private ideology. Amy Alkon says there can be such a thing as “too much law” when perfectly harmless behavior can be punished. Too much law can be likened to “too many knives” – razor-sharp things that can be capriciously employed to stab someone from idle curiosity as to its effects. But unlike knives, laws are rarely left just lying around.

Just ask the authors of this leftist legal activist kit who believe that “oppressive ideologies and systems such as authoritarianism, patriarchy, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, White supremacy, racism, capitalism, and imperialism are embedded in the U.S. criminal justice system.” In their view, justice isn’t blind. It’s on the lookout to get them.

Quite naturally when persons of that persuasion gain power they rewrite the laws to put the shoe on the other foot. They see no problem in turning the law into a weapons system for their own ‘progressive’ ideology since that is what law is for. “Institutional power,” they write, “i.e., the power over, and control of society’s institutions, and economic power, which enables control of those institutions requires the use of violence and the threat of violence. Institutional violence is sanctioned through the criminal justice system and the threat of the military-for quelling individual or group uprisings.”

the DOJ has employed an illegal political litmus test during the interview process … when the law is not equally applied, a citizen’s actions are no longer their own …

“Every Single One” presented key information from the resumes of each of the 113 career attorneys hired to serve within 10 of these 11 sections since the appointment of Eric Holder. The key information presented provided substantial evidence of the political leanings of each hire. In each case, enough evidence was available for a reasonable observer to determine that the hire was neither a conservative, moderate, nor apolitical

If so, by the time “every single one” of the attorneys is through, there will be many more of these legal knives lying around. And who knows, the next time you put on a pair of sandals or make a remark to someone at the water cooler, then you too might find yourself guilty of something. It’s been known to happen.

The individual mania for making other people do what the individual thinks they should do is no better exemplified than in the case of the Houston National cemetery, where a Veteran’s Administration bureaucrat where “grieving families and volunteer groups to not use the words “God” or “Jesus” at any funeral ceremony without [the funeral director's] prior approval.”

A local pastor got a restraining order against the cemetery after being told to edit “Jesus” from his prayer during the Memorial Day weekend. Other veteran groups complained after they too were told to refrain from using “God” or “Jesus” during funerals. They also allege Ocasio closed the chapel and turned it into a conference room. … The director claims she was only trying to make prayers more inclusive of other religions but a backlash now has state and federal politicians calling for her to be fired.

The brouhaha reached a pitch when a Texas Congressman, incensed at the repeated VA denials donned a pair of sunglasses and “went undercover” to observe the proceedings for himself, passing himself off as one of the mourners at a military funeral. There after watching the sobbing widow being badgered, he has vowed to cut every nickel and dime from the funeral director’s budget until she is fired and shipped out of Texas.

Perhaps you could call this unfortunate situation the consequence of a clash of world views. For some, the law is a means of creating a neutral environment in which free individuals can live out their lives. For others it’s just another way to stay on top or to maintain themselves in some miserable self-imagined status of importance. Ian Fleming’s long-ago lines might have find some currency in Holder’s DOJ:

‘This case isn’t ripe yet. Until it is our policy with Mr Big is to “live and let live”.’ Bond looked quizzically at Captain Dexter. ‘In my job,’ he said, ‘when I come up against a man like this one, I have another motto. It’s “live and let die”.’

78 Comments, 78 Threads

1.
Morton Doodslag

Well said. I’ve pointed out before that Obama’s views of American society and governance are perverted and poisonous – he is simply parroting how he thinks our system works, only this time to advance his ideology and to destroy his enemies. After Obama, the deluge. The days of accommodation with the Left are over, compromise with these radicals is no longer possible, and that forces us on the right to either become actual radicals bent on their destruction, lest they destroy us and this nation as Obama is doing now. It should now be abundantly clear that the Left is not bent on making the existing system more perfect through incremental refinement, but intent on destroying what they perceive as one imperial hierarchy of the Right, and replacing it with their own imperial hierarchy of the Left.

My take on this is similar to my take on Islam. Confronted with a radical creed which is ideologically incapable of compromise, and which is hell-bent on my eventual subjugation or destruction, I have no choice but to become radical myself and confront it in kind. I have also said that the worst thing about Islam is how it forces us to become brutal and retaliate in kind, or ultimately fall to their terrorism. The Rule of Talion was arrived at through millions of years of natural selection. Nature tells us we must sometimes mirror the behavior, and sometimes even the wickedness of our enemies, or be destroyed.

We see that the Muslims have no compunction in wreaking atrocities against is – but we have delicate sensibilities which prevent us from doing unto them what they do to us. Big mistake. Same is true of radical believers like Obama and his commie brethren. They think nothing of perverting laws to help their buddies because that’s what they think is the corrupt foundation of our entire society.

md @ 1: … but we have delicate sensibilities which prevent us from doing unto them what they do to us.

What you mean “we”, white man?

I respect and honor those who have restraint where there is any hope of restraint possibly working. It is the message of peace of Jesus, and perhaps Buddha. However, it is only with some deliberation that I frequently find it in myself. I particularly bristle when anyone calls effective defense violent or wicked. I don’t particularly want to do unto them what they have done unto us, I want to threaten them with total destruction if they get on my nerves, and deliver something just somewhat short of that, if needed in order to convey the full message.

Is that self-centric? Is that fair? In matters of survival, one wants to be sure one has their game theory straight.

Islam has evolved some very cute double-think on the matter over the millenia, but Alexander had the answer for such knots.

A few decades ago I would remark to friends on the Left that they wanted to give so much power to government and then were terrified at the thought their political “enemies” would get control of it. If the government did far less, I’d tell them, it would be much less important who controlled it.

Then I began to notice that the civil service system allowed the left to capture and hold bureaucracies and use them to further their goals. You can’t fire someone for being a loyal leftist. The results of elections means nothing to these guys since they think the people are fools. So they would produce crap studies (crap environmental studies are a favorite) that their supervisors would laugh at. Then they leak it to some idiot reporter at the New York Times. They are called a whistle blower and their idiotic work “true” because it was “suppressed.”

It will take a generation to remove these idiots from positions of power and I doubt that we will succeed. About the best we can do is for Congress to take their power away while we go on paying them. It sounds expensive but it is cheap compared to letting them go on taking over the country.

Wretchard, you are describing two incompatible cultural streams. On the one hand we have productive free-thinking teapartiers and on the other parasitic jealous Socialists, who organize like Lilliputians and tie down the giant while he sleeps, with incessant and innumerable laws and regulations.

Because the Socialistic lawmakers and bureaucrats have no understanding of generating wealth, they have no embarrassment over destroying it. They do not even understand that they rely on it.

To complicate the situation, we also have a Group of the very wealthy who are unhappy with Capitalism because it generates enough prosperity to create competitors to their ultra wealth. Using Soros as their avatar, they are hovering to pick up the remaining crumbs.

I want to send a thumbs up to Josh for his intelligent and respectful comments.

Meanwhile a professor at George Washington University Law School is suing Catholic University for doing away with coed dorms on the grounds that the move to single-sex dorms violates the Human Rights Act. According to a spokesman for CU, “[The Human Rights Act] forbids a school from denying or conditioning the use of facilities for a discriminatory reason. The single-sex residence policy that we are phasing in treats both sexes equally, so there is no discrimination. . . . The transition to single-sex residence halls – a return to a policy that was once common – is rooted mainly in a desire to curb the abuse of alcohol and to stymie development of a ‘hook-up’ culture at the University. The University’s decision will contribute to strengthening its educational process and the holistic development of its students. . . . Professor Banzhaf has every right to his opinion and to express it publicly. However, as a citizen unaffiliated with Catholic University in any way, he does not have the right to insist that the institution change its well-considered policies.”

I have one eyebrow raised in skepticism. 40 to 50 folks arriving in bundled cars all conveniently parked on 6 acres of adjacent empty land (owned by whom?) sounds iffy to me (how many kids tag along?) I’ve been to San Juan Capistrano. It’s quiet, upscale – and quiet. Any issues with getting that “conditional use permit” or something else? Sounds like some hot-blooded activism from the “contemplative” studiers. They could be dissecting Mao’s Little Red Book – that’s atill a lot of people.

But the other stuff is, yes, hard to believe how the other five billion live.

As mentioned above, restraint and self-discipline are valuable things and are to be cultivated and applauded. But, like every other strong trait or quality, it has its limits. If you’re in a situation where restraint is not valued, or been tried and failed, then something else must be substituted—you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.

So . . . to fight a tiger you become a tiger? There’s a saying often heard in self-defense/fighting arts circles: “When two tigers fight, one dies and the other is wounded.” When restraint must be abandoned then it must truly be abandoned; you must defeat your enemy according to his own values.

Meanwhile, in related news, South African black nationalists have murdered so many White farmers (and their wives and children), and prominent ANC politicians sing “Kill The Boer”, that South Africa has just moved up a notch on Genocide Watch:

Personally I am sick of it all. Haven’t people got anything better to do than jail flip-flop vendors, execute dirt poor women in some godforsaken Pakistani village or spend zillions of dollars suing people who want to read the Bible?

It’s not like they were going around attacking foreign embassies or selling guns to narcotics traffickers or figuring out how to take your money so that everything conforms to somebody’s idea of “fairness”. But just get the President of Harvard suggest that it might be worthwhile researching the difference between the math aptitudes of the genders and people start fainting dead away. Hell and damnation a crime, a heinous crime has been committed. Just the other day I heard someone speaking in the Australian parliament (left wing of course) go on endlessly about how “processing refugee applications” was a derogatory term because you processed pork but not people. How it was insensitive, unworthy, and indicative of our inner perversions.

To tell you the truth I had never once given the matter the slightest thought. For that matter I doubt whether anyone else did until that politician brought it up and spoke on the matter at length.

I thought processing referred to the paperwork you had to fill out. But no matter, in a little while yet we will have yet another mini-human rights violation, another article of hate speech, another thing to watch out for. All because of somebody in a position of power has a bad vocabulary and wants to use the state to make sure nobody uses words he can’t understand again.

Because the left is obsessesd with finding hate in others, who don’t see it in themselves.

They’ve had one historical success, afaik, the civil rights movement in the US in the 1960s. It was left, even if it was as much Republican as Democratic. The divisions were different back then.

Did the left in the French Revolution find or project hate on the right, hate for the proletariat? Famously the French revolutionaries were middle class and they themselves despised the peasants. The right was (supposed to be) reactionary and greedy, but not hateful, that I’m aware of.

Now the left just runs around with a broad brush accusing anyone of anything, a strange passive-aggressive, like the nutball who accosted Bristol Palin last night, like the left wingnuts who will deface any car with a conservative bumper sticker, when the converse is very rare, like the foaming dickless OSHA character in Ghostbusters so fixated on their mission from godless that they are blind to consequences. It’s not ABOUT consequences, it’s about humoring some arbitrary mental quirk. It is a failure to engage reality. I seldom see it as political at face value at all.

Of course as a tactic it draws on Soviet Stalinism. How earnest any of that has ever been, well, I leave you to consider Orwell’s treatment of it in 1984.

” . . . about how “processing refugee applications” was a derogatory term because you processed pork but not people.”

Last year my Vietnamese-American dentist, daughter of boat people, crisply informed me that one should not say ”Oriental” but rather ”Asian”, as ”oriental” was for things, like ”carpets”. My reply was, “Who decided that?” but she could only say that when she was an undergrad at Columbia the Asian Students Assn had worked very hard on that topic.

So . . . who does decide and how in the hell are they able to pull off stuff like that?

And: ”It’s not like they were going around attacking foreign embassies or selling guns to narcotics traffickers . . . (etc)”. Nor were they sending thugs to Tea Party rallies, disclosing secret intel to newspapers, or printing libelous material about a public figure, actual made-up stuff.

The Americans that I assume are still a majority have been ignorant, but learning fast, and passive, in part due to the ignorance but also because still believing in the democratic process, and and shocked into relative inaction but the realization that those who should enforce the law are ignoring it, breaking it, and/or perverting it into its mirror opposite.

And we’re slow to anger, which is good, but I think we’re idealistically hoping that the next election will begin to set us back on course. If not, will we then start sending our own tough guys to the rallies? Demonstrate in officials’ front yard? Vandalize their cars? Threaten them with assault? Maybe even do it? Seize jails and throw certain officials in there?

The reason the anger’s been so slow is that the dawning awareness as to how rotten things are, how corrupt, and how extensive and brazen is too hard to swallow right away. But I think it’s changing and may it be so for I worry for my grandchildren.

Now the left just runs around with a broad brush accusing anyone of anything

In view of Wretchard’s comment in #11 that he is “sick of it all,” I’ve noticed that there seems to be a feedback loop between legislation and leftist protests in that both activities appeal to a certain type of attention-seeker: case in point is Zombie’s documentation of a nude public protest in San Francisco (where else, I know) against legislation requiring nekkid peeps to sit on towels when using public seating, and to cover their genitals for public health reasons when eating in restaurants. The legislation was introduced in the first place because of the increase in public nudity in SF. Zombie explains:

“In recent months it has become increasingly common to see men walking around San Francisco’s Castro District completely naked. You might assume this is illegal, but no — there is no law against public nudity in San Francisco, unless that nudity also involves ‘lewd thoughts or acts.’ (In practice, what that means is that unless you have an erection or are masturbating, it is OK to expose yourself in San Francisco.)”

The protesters are maintaining that the towel regulation is hate speech and are carrying placards with such phrases as “Get Your Hate Off My Body.” Zombie notes that the real purpose of the protest seems to be exhibitionism for its own sake: “. . . the spot chosen for the nude protest is basically on a traffic island in the middle of an extremely busy intersection; trolley cars filled with commuters and tourists run immediately adjacent to the ‘park,’ while a six-lane major traffic artery runs along the other side; and one of the city’s most crowded pedestrian streets leads right to the same intersection. Why choose that particular spot, not just for Saturday’s protest but for daily nudity year-round? The goal quite obviously is to be seen by as many people as possible. The nudists claim they just want to be left alone and be free to go about their daily lives with no clothes on. But if that were the case, they wouldn’t purposely congregate in crowded places.”

Pics at the link. All the nudists are men, but the protest in PC nonetheless because some of the activists are nudists of color. Zombie did try to blur the photos where applicable but nonetheless they are disturbing– NSFW or for small kids to see.

Gordon – “Last year my Vietnamese-American dentist, daughter of boat people, crisply informed me that one should not say ”Oriental” but rather ”Asian”, as ”oriental” was for things, like ”carpets””

We must excise the use of the term occidental as well. I have been aware of the preference of the term Asian for as long as I have realized that most minorities are conditioned in our reeducation camps of higher learning to take the slightest offense for anything. Being a victim in our society is a mark of superiority.

Long ago the Hebrews were discriminated against and they instead of complaining outwardly drew together and segregated themselves. African Americans slaves also created their own social circles and acted politically in unison the same way that fish school for self defense. Women, long discriminated against joined the fracas and demanded equal rights on top of the privileges of the fairer sex. Every minority since has self identified and has taken the cue to demand special days of observance and celebration of their superior traits. With the inclusion of women these minorities had become a majority numerically and so the Federal Government be trove them with special inalienable rights. Not to be left out, gays demanded their due.

It was as if the government asked those who wanted to be singled out for discrimination to step forward and every designated victim group took one giant step back. We have our volunteers.

What is it about the Middle East and their weird fixation on shoes? Monty Python was way ahead of the curve in noting that in The Life of Brian.

Josh,
To grasp the attitude of the great egalitarians of the Jacobin Club towards the peasants read up on the Vendée.

Gordon,
May I recommend that you say to your dentist, “You are an excellent clinician and I respect your opinion but I shall be asking for a copy of my records now.”

In theory of course Civil Service protections were designed to ensure that no politician or senior bureaucrat, like Ocasio of the Houston cemetery, could impose their beliefs on junior staff. A complaint from coerced staff or the public should set motion wheels that grind exceedingly fine. The current perversion in which functionaries feel immune from the consequences of abusive misconduct is an unintended but predictable outcome. The solution is to return to the less expensive and nonunionized days of open political patronage. One hundred years ago the Administrator of a National Cemetery, like the Collector of Customs or for that matter the local cop or collector of trash, was sent by the local Boss. If you had a complaint, not enough seats at the funeral or to much noise banging the garbage cans in the morning, the Boss would take care of it as long as he knew he could count on your vote. No one was paid very much and the Boss was paid through “honest graft” but it worked. Civil Service reform was one of the first big victories for the Progressive Movement.

The institutions worked because they had the patina of legitimacy. In Weberian terms they had “charisma.” Now they are staggering clanking rusting automatons devoid of any pretense of charisma, especially since the education professionals have cut off any connection between their charges and the cultural heritage that conferred authority without reliance on naked force.

Regarding San Francisco, one of my clients is buying a condo in the Tenderloin district, which is pretty much right in the middle of downtown, near as I can tell. As part of my research I pulled up crime stats for the area and found and astounding 565 crimes reported in a 1 mile radius in the course of one week. I pulled similar stats for 2nd and Main in Los Angeles, an area that covers skid row, and only got 54, which till then I had thought to be a lot. Beset by social pathology and spiritual darkness the place breeds evil of every kind in great profusion.

Just reading about these outrages Wretchard describes provokes anger in me. These are offenses against Justice and cry out for punishment. In my wrath I feel the urge to smack them so hard their teeth fly like scattered coins. To do so at this point would only be to play into their hands and remove myself from the struggle through incarceration. What to do?

Speak.

I notice that when ever and where ever the work of evil is done there is always an attempt to silence the witnesses, usually through intimidation. That is the whole purpose of Political Correctness, silence the outraged witnesses, and construe that silence as assent.

The more I think about it, the more clear it is to me that, as in the case of the Houston cemetery director, the solution is to focus public attention on the situation and shame it into retreat. Call out every lie. Name every corrupt official and their acts. Expose every perversion of truth.

I fear that there will come a time when guns will be required to safeguard the Republic, but the time does not seem to be yet. First, the light must be shined on the darkness to expose it, and sharpen the distinction.

Meanwhile, I recently found some 1/8″ x 30″ steel rods. Wonder if there is an Escrima dojo around here?

Accurate transcription of a speech is “racist” while the speech itself is not considered to be so.

But was the AP transcription of Obama’s remarks racist?
[...]
On MSNBC, the African-American author Karen Hunter complained the news service transcribed Obama’s speech without cleaning it up as other outlets did–specifically including the “dropped g’s.”

Via the AP version:

“Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,” he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. “Shake it off. Stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We have work to do.”

Hunter called the AP’s version “inherently racist,” sparring with New Republic contributing editor and noted linguistics expert John McWhorter, who argued the g-less version “is actually the correct one,”

That’s absolutely stunning: not about Holder, though Obama should have been impeached and Holder ashcanned for it. But that the funeral director has been so brainwashed that she believes that the Free Exercise of Religion, protected by the Constitution, is nullified if someone is Irritated By It.

They stopped teaching civics classes when I was in the ninth grade, in 1969 in North Carolina. This is what has happened. Among a whole host of other evils.

IF we can win the White House and get a Senate majority in 2012, we’re still going to have to clean out the Augean Stables of all their filth. Any engineers up for diverting the Potomac River?

Gordon #14 This kind of stuff is just pure silliness. The only response I have to people like your daft dentist is to say “I think that is silly – surely you must be joking.” There’s no argument to win here – the woman is free to use any label that she chooses – but her rationale is bizarre. The object should be to label silly labelling schemes as – plain silly. Maybe it’s worth printing up a roll of “silly” labels to stick onto silly people.

I seem to remember a rubber stamp in ‘Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ with “Who do They Think They Are?” emblazoned across it. Maybe a rubber stamp with “silly person” would be a better way to label silly people? It would stamp out silliness, so to speak, and would look good stamped onto the forehead of that goofy funeral director.

Silly labels and silly rubber stamps are themselves, of course, so silly that they would make the point just by existing. At least, it all makes perfect sense to someone raised while listening to the “Goon Show” on 1950′s radio.

I am a native of the Bay Area. The south of Market area was long the worst area in SF, a very concentrated skid row. They have been in the the process of trying to gentrify it, but they still have a lot of SROs, and homeless, so the mix is lethal at times. It’s also where they have the big cop shop. You tend to find criminals near the cops, I’m not sure why the connection is, but it’s real.

SF is unique in Western US, a very dense city, limited by water on three sides, so like Hong Kong, land is very valuable. You can’t fill the bay, (BCDC was one of the first fascist environmental boards that legally stole people’s property without compensation).

The south of Market area is also where they put the beautiful baseball stadium, it has changed the area amazingly. I was there before it was built, the change to the surroundings now is unbelievable. That said, not all the old Tenderloin is gone, so it ain’t surprisin crime still lingers. One mile in SF is huge. The whole place is only 7 miles by 7 miles. You do have to be careful where you go, and when in Frisco. Some places are very safe. Some are very dangerous, not that far away.

Regarding land use in San Juan Capistrano. I looked at their municipal ordinance on-line. They have some rigid controls. You can get your car taken from your own property if they decide it is not running. They send the property owner a notice to get rid of the car in 10 days or they can take it and crush it, unless you request a hearing. I saw on-line a guy sued them for taking his truck and not notifying him. This is not from the street, but a driveway. A real stretch using code enforcement as an illegal branch of government. That whole constitution thing about illegal takings, illegal searches and seizing. Guilty until proven innocent.

Local governments can be way worse than the feds regarding process. For example in the Bay Area, the city of San Jose has it’s own kangaroo court where the city is judge, jury and prosecutor for code enforcement matters.

If you look at the San Juan Capistrano muni code, you see some very disturbing justifications for their fascist code. It is illegal to solicit door to door, or sell anything by pushcart. Here is their justification for pushcarts:
Sec. 5-28.01. – Findings and intent.
(a)
Pushcart vendors whose products are carried for the purpose of retail sale present a significant threat to the health and safety of the public in that: (1) the pushcart vendors trespass on private property; (2) the pushcart vendors utilize audible devices at all hours of the day and evening, thereby destroying the peace and quiet of residential neighborhoods; (3) pushcart vendors pose traffic hazards by interrupting traffic circulation on public streets and private driveways; and (4) the pushcart vendors operate their vending in a manner constituting a significant threat to the health, safety, and welfare of the public.
(b)
Pushcart vending operations on sidewalks, parkways and other public property are hereby declared to be a public nuisance which may be prohibited in the City and subject to abatement actions.
(c)
The prohibition of all pushcart vendors in the City will protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public.

Actual City justification! Get that, “a significant threat”, not just a regular threat, but a significant threat. It sounds like they are expecting the tea party to show up and sell tea. Reminds me of the city of Santa Clara, also in California, they made feeding ducks in local parks illegal. No wonder we ran out of money in the State. The fascists are too busy busting bible studies, people feeding ducks or selling flowers from push carts, to do anything useful with our money.

This stuff makes me ashamed to have a Masters in City Planning. It seems the profession is a significant threat to the health, safety and welfare of local communities.

“That drew a barbed response from the woman who was subsequently sentenced to die for her remarks.”

Someday Islam will move beyond what was normal for Europeans in the ’30s and ’40s, and up until 1991; and beyond what was normal for Japanese until 1945; and what was normal for Chinese until…, oops, they still execute people for making remarks unfavorable to the regime.

#17 Annoy Mouse – The lady you are talking about also displays wooly thinking, at best.

Asia is a very big place. Would the “Asian Students’ Association” be happy to welcome Indians, Pakistanis, Turks, Middle Eastern Arabs, Iranians, Afghans, Nepali, Tibetans or eastern Russians into its ranks? I doubt it.

“Orientals” is a description of a much smaller group, at least in terms of ethnicity, and therefore much more useful. But nobody ever accused leftists of being logical.

Another law? Wretchard, as long as lawmaker is even hinted at in the job description of our elected officials, and coupled to the “quest for perfection” mission of every extant bureaucracy, each allowed to selectively enforce and all paid for by US, then the loss of individual freedom is certain.

Anyone here know the total number of existing US federal laws? FYI, this session of Congress is slated to deliver over 71,000 new Federal laws in 2011. Can’t name 5. Mandatory compliance downstream means hundreds of thousands of new laws on regional, state, county and local books. This keeps hundreds of thousands of lower level, compliance-oriented, paper-shuffling staffs busy from WDC to Podunk, at outragious salaries, plus benefits and retirement packages unheard of in the private sector.

Years ago I used to work in San Juan Capistrano when it was booming. It’s extremely affluent, $10 million dollar homes, fairly conservative, and Catholic.

But, it has gotten more liberal in the last 6 to 10 years (Some Hollywood types in the area). It is flooded with “SUV” traffic and has traffic cameras at intersections which is the source of automated revenue generating traffic tickets by mail.

The city holds the Mission San Juan Capistrano and related historical buildings. The “Mission” used to have a bell that rang every hour… but that is gone.

I know that it’s a sanctuary city and does have its share of foreign inhabitants including middle easterner people (but many cities is Orange Country are sanctuary cities and have a lot of foreign people).

I wonder if this bible study dust-up is a Catholic vs. Protestant issue or a Muslim v. Christian issue. It could be a Liberal v. Conservative issue (meaning political issue because politics is discussed it any large group) – or possibly just a local government who needs fine revenue to get out of a budgetary hole. I am not in the area so I don’t know the real story.

True. Wheile at the Pentagon I realized that if you were independently wealthy, did not have to work and devoted 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week to doing nothing but identifying all the laws and assessing their impact on yourself – you could simply not do it.

Aside from the 50k -70K or so new laws passed every year there are so many cases in which what the law really means despite what it actually says can only be assessed by professionals who have reserved that ability for just themselves – in many cases by the simple expediant of interpreting the law in the manner in which they see fit, despite the sometimes clear entnt of the Congress.

The reason Oriental is out is because it implies a Eurocentric point of view.

That’s the thing: those who argue for separation of church and state are overlooking the fact, now quite obvious, that no such thing can exist in our plane of existence.

We have to pick our religions carefully and thoughtfully, because it is inherent in human nature to be religious. The Holder gestapo, nekkid homosexuals, murdering Muslim authorities, just like the religious fanatics who have enshrined their AGW and sexual perversion agendas in our schools, are all fighting to impose their various theologies on the rest of us.

The religions that get us closer to God, and which are thereby wedded to freedom and self-determination, seem to me to be few and far between at best. The religion of most western state governments is just tyranny in various forms. That’s what happens when you banish good religions from the halls of power and the schools.

And the civil rights movement was not a success of the left. It was an evangelical Christian/Judeo-Christian movement (He was, after all, the Reverend Dr. MLK) as was abolition before it. It was later co-opted and ruined by the left. Which goes to the further point that the Devil cannot create anything new but can only ape God.

Simple solution. Impeach Holder. “Fast and Furious” is the opener for that can of worms. And you know the wise Latina will not recuse herself when Obamacare comes before the USSC. Impeach her too.
Ultimately, most of this sillyness can be laid at the clay feet of Congress. One of their jobs is to keep the rest of government on the straight and narrow. With as much corruption as there is in Congress, There should be impeachment trials ongoing during each session. Till the crooks get the idea and look for greener pastures.

MD @ 1 wrote: “The days of accommodation with the Left are over, compromise with these radicals is no longer possible, and that forces us on the right to either become actual radicals bent on their destruction …”

Many have come to that conclusion. My conversion from one who saw accommodation as acceptable in some cases (primarily environmental protection) to one who sees the Left as criminal or criminally negligent has been driven partly by the illegal and unconstitutional actions of the Obama administration. But most of all it is the product of talking with Obama supporters about 20th century disasters caused by Marxism. To a person, they refuse to concede that their program in the U.S. could lead to a gulag. As far as I am concerned, such refusal makes them either criminal (if they lie because they desire a gulag) or criminally negligent (if they haven’t given the matter serious consideration).

I know a man whose wife was killed in a crash caused by a drunk driver passing on a hill across a double yellow line and with a suspended license. The judge’s idea of punishment was to suspend the miscreant’s license again. My acquainance had to plead with the judge to get the criminally negligent individual locked up for a few months. Pity the man who chooses to beg for justice for his murdered wife. How many more will the drunk murder? What personal actions are justifiable, or called for by duty, against a person habitually criminally negligent?

Is the Left as a whole criminally negligent for past and potential future gulags? With all the evidence on hand for a Bayesian evaluation of the chance of another Marxist gulag in the future, I don’t see much difference between an American Leftist and someone who habitually passes on a hill. Excluding the domestic terrorists, they just haven’t crashed into anyone in this country yet, but that they might do so is not a concern to them.

Oriental and occidental are multisyllabic words for east and west. If we are to piffle about that we should have an honest discussion as to who gets to be considered the northern hemisphere and who gets to be the southern hemisphere. Let us all throw out Greenwich Mean Time and speak only of twelve o’clock noon, zero degrees longitude, zero degrees latitude, which is where ever your ego, center of the universe happens to be.

Victimhood will always be in vogue as long as we reward victims the way we do. Maybe it is time to start punishing victims for being so pathetic. Don’t forget, in today’s parlance, racist = niggah. You should know better to show up at the lunch counter. Why don’t you hang your head in shame?

…added to the previous list designated victims are the Muslims who got on the victimology gravy train in time to ride it into the walk of stars of occidental fame; they are the biggest grievance group to date and their sacrificial lambs, the Palestinians.

and in regards to naked old men in SF:

There will come a time when everybody
Who is lonely will be free…
To sing & dance & love

There will come a time when every evil
That we know will be an evil…
That we can rise above

Who cares if hair is long or short
Or sprayed or partly grayed…
We know that hair ain’t where it’s at

(there will come a time when you won’t
Even be ashamed if you are fat!)

Wah wah-wah wah

There will come a time when everybody
Who is lonely will be free…
To sing & dance & love (dance and love)

There will come a time when every evil
That we know will be an evil…
That we can rise above (rise above)

Who cares if you’re so poor you can’t afford
To buy a pair of mod a go-go stretch-elastic pants…
There will come a time when you can even
Take your clothes off when you dance Frank Zappa

stoicheon – you are absolutely right about Holder, but not about Sotomayer. Impeachment is a powerful tool, and must be used wisely and carefully. I think it is *Very* important to point this out, becuause I believe Holder SHOULD be impeached, and that is an incredible thing to say about someone who is the top law enforcement official in this country.

Put simply, impeachment *Has* to be reserved for those instances in which clear criminal behavior is involved, both by the language of the constitution (High Crimes and Misdemeanors, the modifier “High” applies to both classes, meaning not jaywalking) and by long custom. That was the heart of the fight about Bill Clinton – did his lying rise to the level of a “High Crime of Misdemeanor”?

Now with Holder, we have Obstruction of Justice (the New Black Panther case) and now apparently approving the purchase and tranpsort of illegal weaponry, which would support charges of criminal conspiracy, piles of weapons charges, gun trafficking, and since his actions led directly to the death of the Agent who was killed by those guns, I think a case of manslaugter would stick. (don’t downplay it, that’s at least 10 years in a Federal Prison)

To put it bluntly – Eric Holder is the most viscious and wanton Criminal to have EVER held the office of Attorney General in the history of this country. There are Mafia Capo’s who have committed less crimes than he has.

Now to put Sotomayer in the same basked just diminishes us. I do not like her politics and views, but not in anyone’s wildest dreams is she accused of doing anything criminal – our dispute with her is only political and philosophical. To put her alongside Holder only serves to diminish his Crimes, and make it all seem like a witch hunt. One thing many do not know – “Recusal” for a Supreme Court Judge is a red herring – there are NO laws, NO statutes, NO enforcable standards as to whether or not a SC Justice should or should not recuse themselves – only custom and peer pressure. That’s just how it is, and is how it has always been. Whining about it is foolish – let the left do that. (which they do about Clarence Thomas) But it’s a fool’s errand.

Sotomayer is just a political hack. Holder is probably the greatest pure CRIMINAL to EVER rise to high office in this country!!!

geoffb@21 link: On MSNBC, the African-American author Karen Hunter complained the news service transcribed Obama’s speech without cleaning it up as other outlets did–specifically including the “dropped g’s.”

Oh dear. (Significant) Naivete Alert. None of them speak like that in private – by ‘them’ I mean politicians (with the exception of the south where the regional patois still drawls with honey-tipped venom. Part of what made James Carville such a difficult character to absorb – smart guy, dedicated to his family, snake-oil campaign manager fully keyed in to human nature, skinny southern boy addicted to the deep-fat fried cuisine, and dogmatically committed to his friends and his beliefs (how quickly we forget Carville’s many moods when Ed Rendell “loses it”.) At any rate, some of those southern boys are very different.) The dropped g’s are for consumption by – you know who. The handlers who advise this should be – how to put it – strung up by their gills.

O/T: Another episode of “Groundhog’s Day” with the markets. People were saying that no way the PPT could resist goosing the markets given the US Senate voted for a continuing resolution (the US government is even deeper in debt). I guess the PPT’s algorithms are programmed to keep the DJIA between 11.4K and 10.8K. In a month or two, Greece will default and then the billions spent propping up the markets will go “poof”. Hooray! They kicked the can down the road for another month and it only cost a zillion dollars.

I used to work with a man who made it to America during Bush One’s Operation Homecoming. He had been an architect in Vietnam and was sentenced to the camps. He signed his drawings Dang Dang Dang, so I called him Mr. Dang Dang Dang — I assume his name was something like that. Like many of my co-workers (at a refugee agency), he urgently wanted us to understand what had happened to him, and, lacking English skills, he drew detailed architectural recreations of the re-education camp. Something he drew repeatedly was the outdoor latrine. It was a large squarish hole, rendered with his beautiful draftsmanship. He explained to me that everyone had to go to the bathroom at the same time, not just for the convenience of the guards, but as an ideological expression of collective existence. If you did not go with the others, or if you had to go at another time and they caught you, they shot you and threw you in the latrine, and everyone else had to use your corpse as their toilet.

I don’t understand how anyone could survive a thing like this and still be gentle, and optimistic, and even wry and very funny. But when I looked into Mr. Dang Dang Dang’s eyes as he struggled to explain this to me, I was gratefully forced to confront the logical conclusion of collectivism, and to reconsider many things I had vaguely and lazily paid little attention to, or even believed.

e @ 41: no kidding. I thought the other day they were letting it go below 10800, but nooooooo. And this present kick is major. Good lord, how soon before they announce the prices five years in advance?

dr @ 43: there’s a famous scifi story “And Then There Were None” about an Earth ship full of officious types supposed to bring the planet into the federation or something, but the simple and slightly odd humans there have discovered an amazing principle that totally frustrates the Earth ship, which finds its personnel defecting so quickly that the ship takes off and goes away while it still has anyone left. The principle is “MYOB” – mind your own business.

WWS @38
I disagree. I firmly believe that 3-5 percent of federal judges should be impeached every year. It would serve to weed out the bad ones, like the 9th Circuit and tend to convey to the remainder what the limits of their judicial behavior should be. We see far too many idiotic decisions and outcomes contrary to the Constitution. Impeachment doesnt hurt. They’ll get over the embarrassment.

I began to notice that the civil service system allowed the left to capture and hold bureaucracies and use them to further their goals….elections means nothing to these guys since they think the people are fools…It will take a generation to remove these idiots from positions of power and I doubt that we will succeed. About the best we can do is for Congress to take their power away while we go on paying them. It sounds expensive but it is cheap compared to letting them go on taking over the country.

Nah, Live (free) and Let Die. Like the guy vowing to cut funds, simply diband the entire outfit. Really, what do we need a DOJ for? What crimes can’t be handled by State and local laws? Abolish the department wholesale. All those bureaucrats are simply gone, with no more influence. Same with EPA, HUD, EEOC etc. etc. I’m okay with a radical step like that. More and more Americans are becoming okay with it every single day.

Is it really unthinkable that that could happen? No, nothing is unthinkable any more. The Left has created a break, a discontinuity, by tossing tradition in the ash can to pursue their agenda. If they wouldn’t hold themselves committed to what came before them, we’ve no reason to hold ourselves committed to what they’ve created. Burn, baby, burn!

Gordon

Last year my Vietnamese-American dentist, daughter of boat people, crisply informed me that one should not say ”Oriental” but rather ”Asian”, as ”oriental” was for things, like ”carpets”. My reply was, “Who decided that?” but she could only say that when she was an undergrad at Columbia the Asian Students Assn had worked very hard on that topic.

I’d be inclined to look for a new dentist, one who didn’t hector her patients and, perhaps more importantly, one who spent her time in school studying rather than agitating on behalf of political organizations.

ridgerunner

I know a man whose wife was killed in a crash caused by a drunk driver passing on a hill across a double yellow line and with a suspended license.

Correction: the man’s wife was not killed by a drunk driver, she was killed by a reckless driver. The attempt to assign every traffic fatality possible to “drunk” drivers is part of the same movement of legal obscenity Wretchard wrote about in this post. Instead of addressing the reckless driving, we pick some supposed “root-cause” and criminalize it. It starts off reasonable enough (to be legally drunk, you had to be functionally impaired, e.g. unable to walk a straight line etc.). But that soon gets replaced by a technical test (Blood alcohol level), and the levels get lowered, and then we set up checkpoints to test people who’s driving in now way indicates a problem…

And what’s the actual result? Mostly fines and financial penalties. More first-time offenders, but there are still habitual hazards driving on suspended licenses with multiple DUI convictions. We should scrap the whole “drunk-driving” crusade and embark on a “reckless driving” crusade. But that requires trusting everyone from traffic cops to muni judges with a wide latitude of judgement and discretion, and the current crop doesn’t deserve that much trust.

So, we’re back to the top of my comment – disband all the existing bureacracies, which can’t do their jobs anyway. Then build something new, with new people.

Josh @ 44: Again O/T (sorry, can’t resist). In California/Nevada they have these lavish stately homes that were previously owned by filthy rich people and then donated to the state as tax write-offs because they were too expensive to maintain, e.g. Hearst Castle, Filoli, Thunderbird Lodge, etc. When one tour’s these homes and hears about the people who previously owned them, one story is almost always the same, i.e. they had most of their money in the stock market prior to the Great Depression, pulled everything out just before the crash and then fully reinvested at the market bottom. I always wondered how those people were so prescient. Now the wonder is gone. The system was doing the same crap in the 1920-1930s that it’s doing now. The people on the inside knew the game was rigged, played it accordingly and came out stinking rich. Too bad the rest of the nation had to endure utter poverty, including my grandparents.

10. bell curve: “South African black nationalists have murdered so many White farmers (and their wives and children), and prominent ANC politicians sing “Kill The Boer”, that South Africa has just moved up a notch on Genocide Watch”

So will Obama call on the UN to invoke R2P? To not do so makes him racist, right?(Wright)

11. wretchard: “Personally I am sick of it all.”
So am I. I think leftists are mostly sociopaths. They have no concern for others but will tolerate those like themselves. The key point is commitment. The left is committed to forcing change, their world view, on everyobne else. And BIG government is their enforcement arm. Defund the enforcement arm by returning power to the lowest, local level. I had a discussion this weekend with a teacher friend who was complaining the unions forced the teachers to support policies detrimental to best practices. I said to him, “then make them stop.” He wondered how and I answered, the teachers ARE the union. He could not grasp that concept and that is why the union has the power but the members do not. Crazy.

Herb, @45: like many people, you are only looking at the situation from the viewpoint of *your* side being in power. The genius of an independant judiciary is that the Left has to face watchdogs of the right that they can’t get rid of, the right has to face the watchdogs of the left. It’s a brake on the extremes of either side. In your system, political examinations of Judges would become standard almost immediately, and any thought of actual legal skill would quickly vanish.

Think about the tool – impeachment. Who has that power? Congress? Do you think ANYTHING that any Congress, left or right, ever does can be anything less than 100% political?

Sure, when your political allies are in power it’s great. But your system would have allowed Pelosi, Obama, and Reid to have gotten rid of any conservative judge who didn’t tow their line while they were in power from 2008 – 2010. The entire Judicial system would be turned into one vast political spoils system – which is pretty much the system that exists in South America and most of the 3rd world.

There is a simple way to evaluate whether a political system is safe for its citizens – a good political system stands up and protects citizens EVEN when all of your worst political enemies are in complete power. That’s how you HAVE to evaluate things, because that always happens sooner or later! This is the true Genius of the American System: Our Constitutional government passes that test, even when it goes out to an extreme as it has right now. (note how it is beginning to correct itself)

If you want to make Federal Judges a little bit more responsible, then drop the lifetime appointment and change it to 10 year terms – FREE of any political influence, either way. That can be done constitutionally. Using a weapon like Impeachment for purely political goals is the kind of thing the leftists would do – but we, not just as conservatives but as Americans, are much, much better than that.

#38 Now with Holder, we have Obstruction of Justice (the New Black Panther case) and now apparently approving the purchase and tranpsort of illegal weaponry, which would support charges of criminal conspiracy, piles of weapons charges, gun trafficking, and since his actions led directly to the death of the Agent who was killed by those guns, I think a case of manslaugter would stick. (don’t downplay it, that’s at least 10 years in a Federal Prison)

To put it bluntly – Eric Holder is the most viscious and wanton Criminal to have EVER held the office of Attorney General in the history of this country. There are Mafia Capo’s who have committed less crimes than he has

DO NOT FORGET HE RECOMMENDED PARDONING MARC RICH UNDER THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION. That alone should have disqualified him from the AG office.

On the topic of tolerance, let us not forget that many of us would be banned from most websites for being un-PC. As the world gets more crowded, the elite get less tolerant. They demand uniformity of opinion and values. In fact, it is the elites who demand that the rest of us low-life’s must live with unassimilated foreign nationals, because what is good for their less affluent neighbors is good for the third world.

So elite rich people who live in rich neighborhoods should be allowed to exclude the riff raff from their neighborhoods to the extent that they will not allow helado carts with bellowing merchants with Bermuda bells. That is what multiculturalism is, it is not respecting your culture and your laws. It is selling tamales door to door where anyone else selling without a permit gets fined or jailed. A friend of mine, a LA police sergeant explained to me, that they do not pull over illegal’s for anything other than the most egregious of crimes. They are a specially protected group. Conversely, the average citizen is the enemy of the state and is ruthlessly prosecuted for every petty crime or appearance that yields a fine. The US Government is the largest organized racist hate crime racket.

On the topic of tolerance, let us not forget that many of us would be banned from most websites for being un-PC. As the world gets more crowded, the elite get less tolerant.

And not just the elites. Their sycophantic wannabes are even worse. Ever try to post something humorous and sarcastic at, say “LiveScience,” or other light science/social issues sites? Talk about a bunch of petty prissyninnies.

Conversely, the average citizen is the enemy of the state and is ruthlessly prosecuted for every petty crime or appearance that yields a fine. The US Government is the largest organized racist hate crime racket.

They don’t like us much, do they? The First Couple have made it abundantly obvious that they find most of their “subjects” objectionable.

“Haven’t people got anything better to do than jail flip-flop vendors, execute dirt poor women in some godforsaken Pakistani village or spend zillions of dollars suing people who want to read the Bible?”

You take this all as incidental or petty little tyrannies, but you know better. This is all about control; control through fear by creating a climate where people are afraid to do anything lest it run afoul of the authorities.

I seem to recall here you made a great illustration more than once of the Stalin techniques used to insure loyalty to the regime. Call in a number of party members, randomly call out names, accuse them of betraying the revolution, and immediately take them out and have them shot. Guilt or innocence, nor even uncovering saboteurs was not the point of the exercise. Its sole intention was to create a climate where everyone else left would not even THINK of doing anything that could be construed as subversive, lest yours be the next name called.

Certainly the degrees of punishment here vary greatly, from execution, to imprisonment, to fines, but is it not all the same technique? Does the state really think that crosses on Halloween sandals is that important, or is the real objective to send a message that says, “We can imprison this guy for selling the wrong sandals. What do you think we can do to YOU if you do something really troublesome?”

The anti-religious edicts here are the same ball of wax, or am I missing something? Religious faith, particularly of the Christian persuasion, is not in favor for much of the elite, so these little displays of power are meant to condition people to keep all that “Jesus stuff” under their hat and out of sight. They can’t ban Christianity outright, at least not yet, but they wish to make it very clear that they don’t approve, and there is a cost to being a too enthusiastic a believer.

On the subject of the Holderites and their pet liberal US attorneys, I cannot fathom why they don’t seem to get that others can, and will, eventually, play at that game; and will no doubt serve up a dish that the Left will find much less to their liking. . .

“Now to put Sotomayer in the same basked just diminishes us. I do not like her politics and views, but not in anyone’s wildest dreams is she accused of doing anything criminal”

Maybe I did a typo? Sotomayer was the driving force behind the language in Obamacare. For her to rule on the constitutionality of it is a clear conflict of interest. She should recuse herself;
Verb 1. recuse – disqualify oneself (as a judge) in a particular case

I am probably wrong but I always thought a conflict of interest was a misdemeanor unless there was a bribe involved, in which case corruption laws apply.
It will no doubt surprise most Americans, but for a judge to accept money, favors, or any other consideration in exchange for a ruling has been illegal for centuries.
Alex, I’ll take High crimes and misdemeanors for 100

53. Weary G “…so these little displays of power are meant to condition people to keep all that “Jesus stuff” under their hat and out of sight.”

I agree with you; Even though the meetings were out of sight, in someone’s personal home, they felt compelled to prohibit it. Clearly a violation of their first ammendment rights and should be challenged immediately. Do they bar people from getting together at one house to drink a couple of beers and watch the football games like in a sports bar? How about having people over to dinner like a restaurant? No commerce? As far as the article reports, there was none during the meetings either. The local government overstepped their jurisdiction and should get slammed.

In the absence of damage or injury, reckless driving is typically a subjective judgment by a LEO, not even close to as objective as blood ethanol level. Sorry to hear they nailed you at a DUI checkpoint.

“I am probably wrong but I always thought a conflict of interest was a misdemeanor unless there was a bribe involved, in which case corruption laws apply.”

Stoicheon, you are most definitely wrong. Not your fault, this is a common misconception. Conflict of Interest laws are specific to the particular office and are passed by states and municipalities – and not even all of those have them. They do NOT apply to anyone in the Federal Judiciary. For Judges in general, the Conflict of Interest guidelines are not “Laws” at all but rather are ethical guidelines monitored by the American Bar Association. The ONLY enforcement mechanism is to take the complaint to a Higher level Judge, and see if you can convince That Judge to take the case away from the original Judge. Also, it may be grounds for appeal, although the original Judge will face no penalties.

Now at the Supreme Court, there are no higher Justices to take a complaint to, and there are no appeals. So, other than the ABA’s general ethical guidelines, of which compliance is completely voluntary, there are NO rules covering conflict of interest for a Supreme Court Justice.

I am very serious – at that level, there is NO Statutory Enforcement of *any* conflict of interest rules. They simply do not exist. That will probably be quite surprising to most people, but that’s how it is.

If you were to comment that this makes it look like the rules are only for the “little people”, and never meant to apply to any of those who actually run the system, then I’d have to say, “you finally noticed that, huh?”

wws:
I recognize your point. But it takes 2/3 of the Senate to convict. So it’ll be hard. They have other things to do so trials will be a bother. I guess my point is that the congress has failed in its responsibility to discipline the judiciary. They should have stepped in when the USSC changed the Constitution to ignore the 10th amendment and the religious exercise clause. I said 3-5% of them not wholesale. Any organization would benefit from a 3-5% cull every year.

The advise and consent process isnt foolproof. All politics needs a formal way to do-over.

I disagree with the idea that Judges should be treated as gods. They follow the same bell curve as everybody else.

#36 Annoy Mouse – Not sure I agree. North and south hemispheres are different in concept from western and eastern hemispheres, for the very simple reason that the equator has real physical significance derived from Earth’s rotation.

Western and eastern hemispheres are an artificial construct, and it’s just an accident of history that most of the USA has longitude (something) W. (I’m not sure, but I think there may be a couple of Aleutian islands with E in their longitude.)

An illustration of this is simple. If you are standing on the west coast of the USA, what is the direction to go in if you want the least distance to Japan?

In the absence of damage or injury, reckless driving is typically a subjective judgment by a LEO, not even close to as objective as blood ethanol level. Sorry to hear they nailed you at a DUI checkpoint.

Careful ridgerunner, you could lose your journalism license in the UK for libeling me! I’ve never been “nailed” for a DUI, or any other traffic infraction for that matter. I have slogged through the line leading to a DUI checkpoint to have an officer ask me if I’ve been drinking though.

Blood alcohol levels are “objective”, that’s true. But they’re not predictive, which is the problem. Bureaucrats always love objective charts and no-subjective-judgmeent allowed. For two reasons. First, they don’t want any of those mouth-breathing, unenlightened “others” to make decisions, and second, they don’t want to have to make any decisions themselves because they might get it wrong.

The transfer of law enforcment activity from cops, DAs and judges using – and being accountable for – good judgement to robotic (literally in the case of traffic cameras, and you could argue nearly so for brethalyzers) enforcement of byzantine and expanding codes is part of the decline of our culture.

When I was young, drunk driving was considered amusing. MADD estimates that it has prevented 300,000 deaths from drunk driving since it began to educate the public about the problem, and to lobby the authorities for strict enforcement.

At 16 I had my first introduction to drunk driving and human irresponsibility in general. I was driving a Ford Comet on a snake-hunting trip with my brother and a friend. A drunk driver came into my lane such that I had to take his lane; then at the last minute he reentered his lane and I had to go into the ditch on the left side of the road. We took an hour to unstick our car, and then lo and behold here comes the drunk again weaving all over the road. My brother was driving this time and forced him off the road. I jumped out with a Coke bottle as a club and dragged the SOB out of his car. He couldn’t even stand up. When a LEO arrived, he said the drunk did this all the time. He said he would spend a few days in jail and do it again. That was 1962, long before MADD.

You have a bizarre criterion for recognizing cultural decline. I think the culture has declined precisely because of the lack of punishment of anti-social activity at all levels: from Goldman Sachs to boom cars. How you can be against effective enforcement of sober driving I do not understand.

By the way, drunk driving was not the topic of my first post, but was merely an analogy to the criminal (=highly anti-social) negligence that I believe characterizes many Leftists.

20. Tamquam
>>I notice that when ever and where ever the work of evil is done there is always an attempt to silence the witnesses, usually through intimidation. That is the whole purpose of Political Correctness, silence the outraged witnesses, and construe that silence as assent.

The more I think about it, the more clear it is to me that, as in the case of the Houston cemetery director, the solution is to focus public attention on the situation and shame it into retreat. Call out every lie. Name every corrupt official and their acts. Expose every perversion of truth. <<

Some of my more Machiavellian acquaintances have set up a website to take that to the next level. Stop by Great American Zeroes and learn how to let loose the dogs of war on the worst violators of the public trust. And think about carrying a tightly rolled up newspaper.

I must object to superimposing ideology over criminal behavior. CNBC just reran The Smartest Guys in the Room, the Enron documentary, including the parts about GWB supporting Ken Lay from the White House as California went black – until the carnival stopped. (BTW Bethany McClean, the Fortune writer who co-authored the book of the same name is the same reporter that blew off Patrick Byrne of Deep Capture fame.)

Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom was a devout Baptist who told his congregation “I just want you to know you aren’t going to church with a crook”, he said. “No one will find me to have knowingly committed fraud.”

I fail to see your point or the point of your examples. I am not “superimposing ideology over criminal behavior.” I am doing the opposite: I am saying that the history of the Marxist program is so horrific that anyone who advocates state control at all Left of Center is supporting a future horror and as such is either criminal or criminally negligent in the moral sense (obviously not in the legal sense due to the First Amendment).

rr@74: OK. Not sure if you’re being disingenuous, but I see the distinction – the moral criminality of ideology (collectivism) vs the legal criminality of the justice system (which presumably is not dominated by Leftist perps), but I submit that the criminality of Lay, Skilling, Ebbers et al was moral as well as legal, in which case the ‘fault bucket’ is filled with a broad variety of ne’er-do-wells.

RE: The State (as visceral a subject as abortion or religion)

I would further submit that the present situation is complicated because specific segments of modern society intentionally exempted themselves from state control (banking), while specific segments of modern society intentionally subverted the very concept of government (corporations via rent-seeking.) The solution in the minds of many is to “bomb Iraq,” which is to say, nuke the Middle Class safety nets and castrate government. That is not the answer, imo.

Of course there were and are morally-criminal individuals who support Right-of-Center politics. However, the scope of Marxist crime (100 million murdered during the 20th century) eclipses the economic crimes of the Lays and Ebbers.

RE: Your comment about the State. I don’t disagree and am a more radical law-and-order proponent than anyone I know. For example, I would like to see white-collar crime punished severely, even to the extent of capital punishment for the most egregious crimes. And a meme that conservatives should propagate is that rent-seeking is theft. The practical problem is how to reduce/eliminate anti-social behaviors without instituting an oppressive government. At my own local level, I have observed that effective enforcement of reasonable laws is a major problem. The politicians consider their job done after legislation is passed. The bureaucracy that should carry out enforcement is often corrupt, stupid or lazy, and drops the enforcement ball; its standards are very low.

rr: Not doing a good job of timely responses but yes, 100 million (I’ve seen an estimate of 200 million) dead for what – was it the Strong Man at the top or the True Believers who ‘implemented’ The Vision? The modern world and the current collection of nasty problems are similar but not the same. Bureaucratic bumbling is similar (corporate bumbling not being a totally foreign entity – Anything Goes Capitalism is an edgy construct) but the specific problems have the distinct flavor of a modern twist – with energy transitions, biotech and med tech game-changers on the medium-term horizon, weaponry, the financial work-out, health care (premiums up 9% since 2001 but nobody asks what the escalation was for seniors – I’m guessing double if not triple the average rate) but maybe most importantly the naked – what is the best word – cavalier insouciance? – of the current polity, here and in the EU, as per the last three years worth of issues discussed here and elsewhere. I’m rushed for time right now so I’ll leave it there.